The present invention relates to a stop maintaining system of a vehicle, which is switchable of a brake force control state by operating a control mechanism capable of controlling various mechanisms which are different from a brake force control mechanism.
Conventionally, arts for reducing, when an auto hold switch of which ON and OFF modes are switchable therebetween is turned on and a vehicle is detected to be in a stopped state, a burden on a vehicle driver which accompanies depression of a brake pedal by automatically operating a brake force control device which is represented by an Anti-lock Brake System (ABS) or a Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) system, to automatically stop (auto hold) the vehicle, are proposed (e.g., JP2008-008425A).
The auto hold switch is provided to, for example, a center console, a vehicle driver is able to set a control mode relating to an auto hold execution control by turning on/off (switching operation of) the auto hold switch.
Generally, a manual switch, such as the auto hold switch, does not include a hold circuit, and a signal of H− (logic high) level is inputted to a controller (e.g., an electronic control unit (ECU)) only when the switch operation is performed by the driver, otherwise a signal of L− (logic low) level is inputted.
The controller sets an auto hold execution mode when the signal level is H, and sets an auto hold release mode when the signal level is L.
Further, in the auto hold execution mode, the controller performs the auto hold execution control upon detecting a stopped state of the vehicle.
JP2015-195553A discloses a mobile terminal operation system for a vehicle, which although is not related to a stop maintaining system of a vehicle including an auto hold switch, but includes a controller which receives an operation from a vehicle driver, and a system-side communicator for notifying to a mobile terminal operation information indicating the operation inputted to the controller. The mobile terminal operates according to an operation on a terminal-side user interface, and also operates according to the operation on the controller of which operational configuration is different from that of the terminal-side user interface.
Thus, even for an application which is activated based on an operation through a touch panel, it is possible to control it with intermittent input to the controller without focusing on a display screen.
For structural abnormality of the switch operation of the auto hold switch, there are ON and OFF failures.
When the signal level is switched from L to H, the controller switches the control mode from the auto hold execution mode to the auto hold release mode or from the auto hold release mode to the auto hold execution mode. Therefore, whichever failure occurs, the control mode is not settable.
Although the ON and OFF failures of the auto hold switch are electrically detectable by adopting a failure diagnosing mechanism etc. in an electric circuit, it causes an increase in cost and an intention of the driver remains not reflected, and thus, operational reliability of the auto hold control is not secured.
The mobile terminal operation system for the vehicle of JP2015-195553A is controllable of the single control target based on the different operational configurations of operations from the different user interfaces. Thus, even if one of the user interfaces fails, by operating the other user interface, it is still possible to control the control target intentionally.
However, with the art of JP2015-195553A, the control target is the mobile terminal and not the stop maintaining system of the vehicle including the auto hold switch. Therefore, it is difficult to provide both operational convenience and reliability to the driver.
For example, when an abnormality in the switch operation of the auto hold occurs, the driver usually notices it while the vehicle is traveling, therefore he/she needs to set a control mode of his/her need with a simple operation, and setting the control mode of the auto hold by the intermittent input to the application such as disclosed in JP2015-195553A is not realistic in terms of time, number of procedures etc. of the operation by the driver.
Further, to change the control mode according to the intention of the driver, even though the fixed signal level which is outputted to the controller simply needs to be inverted, a large-scale installation of the system-side communicator etc. is required, which may cause an increase in cost.
For this reason, to provide both the operational convenience and reliability to the driver, an enhancement of the stop maintaining system of the vehicle is needed.